[tubesforever]

I love to travel.  When I do get out and about I love to play my Hagerman gear whenever possible.

Its good to get a reality check with diy gear because while it might do well in your own system it might not play as friendly with other gear.  Reality is a good thing and keeping diy real is very important in my own line of thinking.

In May, I took my Piccolo to "MuzikMike's" Ribfest in southern Pennsylvania.  This trip ended up being a great deal of fun and the ribs were tasty too!. 

Mike's VPI table sported a Dynavector DV-20XL

I loaded up my Piccolo with the appropriate resistors to dial in this impressive cartridge   About a dozen audio asylum inmates heared what loading on the fly can do to improve the overall performance of a recording.

As I went from higher resistance to lower resistance, with each step you could clearly hear how the vocals went from dull to vibrant when playing Rickie Lee Jone's first album. 

I used "Easy Money" as the test piece and nearly everyone was in agreement as to what they liked the best.

This last week I took my Piccolo up to Portland and played it in a friend's system where his SUT's simply created more hum than he could tolerate.

We plugged in my Piccolo and all we heard was silence..... zero hum and no noise from my Piccolo.

If you have not been following my Piccolo threads, I built my Piccolo powered by a  Bugle power supply and used Rubicon Black Gate NK caps which are
-160 db noise level.  These might be the quietest power supply caps on the planet.

If you are on the fence about building a Piccolo its time to jump off and start building.  The Piccolo is for real.  Just follow my build scheme and a totally silent MC head amp will be yours.

I always get a thrill when my Hagerman equipment does something unexpected.  For some reason with the DL 103 the Cornet 2 was overloading with the Cinemag SUT on its high output.  I found that turning the Piccolo down to the intemediate gain with the correct loading provided the best overall dynamics.

Having 3 gain selections and 6 loading selections makes the Piccolo a stand out in overall ease of use.   The sonics are out of this world!

Cheers!

[Sonny]

Thanks...so, what was the preferred loading for the 20XL?
Thanks
T

[JimK]

Jim,

Long story short: This newly found fascination of mine with DIY is all your fault! If I had not have heard that Piccolo at Mikee's place....

(Thanks!)

Jim

[tubesforever]

The internal resistance of the DV20XL is 9-15 ohms I believe.  Someone check this to be sure. 

I ended up loading it at 10, 33, 75, 150, 390 and 510

I had about a dozen AudioAsylum inmates listening at the time and we simply flipped through the options to find the one that did Ricki Lee Jones voice the best on the system at hand.

I like 10 ohms the best because either the tweeters rolled off too fast or his other components were overly warm.  Most everyone liked either 10 to 33 ohms in that system.

Use a different preamp, amp and speakers and the 150 to 510 might be necessary.

The fun thing about building it with easily replaceable resistors is you can fine tune your Piccolo to help the majority of your LP's sound their very best.

I love this Piccolo.  I had an engineer at the place and he told me it was the quietest head amp he ever heard. 

Jim Hagerman can definitely design a circuit!  Just build the power supply to deliver quietly and musical magic will be in the mix.

[tketcham]

Hi, Jim,

Are you sure you got the observations written down correctly? Seems that with higher resistances you would have heard a more airy, detailed, and lively presentation. (I'm assuming that's what you were after when you described "how the vocals went from dull to vibrant.") The damping effect is inverse to resistance; lower resistance=more damping, as depicted in this graph from Hagerman Technology LLC's cartridge loading page:



A 10 Ohm resistance would be damping that 20XL way down. Maybe the switch on your Piccolo is backwards? Or there's a capacitance/resistance effect going on? Interesting phenomenon you guys observed.

Tom

[tubesforever]

The Piccolo loads the cartridge before the signal hits the gain stages.  You are basically tailoring the frequency response of the cartridge before it hits the active circuit.   As you go closer to the motor's resistance the output falls and you get more highs vs lows.  As you go higher loading you get more volume and the highs fall off and the bass fills in. 

Its a balancing act that will be unique to every system.  That's why I used the Phoenix blocks.  It allows you to swap resistors in minutes and find the ones that sound most balanced in the system.

I did not expect to need 10 ohms at Mikes place but that's what it required to get her voice natural.  33 ohms sounded good too.  150 sounded fine but her voice was more syrupy. 

Tom you gotta get to ribfest this year!  I plan to bring some toys!   Mike's ribs are amazing!  And meeting a dozen or more inmates was great.

[tketcham]

I'll have to do some more reading about loading and where in the chain it's applied. I used a Piccolo for a while and it acted much like the solid state phono stage that it was feeding. That is, setting higher resistance values resulted in less damping and a more lively sound. Lower values were just the opposite. Subtle but noticeable. Differences may have something to do with system synergy and all that.

It would be fun to take a road trip back East and that's a nice time of the year to be there. I did a tour of the deep South a few years ago - drove from Washington to Florida and back via 18 states. Might be time for another tour. I could hunt for used vinyl along the way.

Happy Holidays!
Tom